4. Phoebe

4

PHOEBE

L ater, Phoebe realized that her first trip through the training tunnel was also the beginning of her falling in love with her mentor. She tried not to—she did her very best to banish all the forbidden thoughts and images that kept popping into her head and she absolutely refused to picture Sirex when she gave in to her erotic urges in the middle of the night. But the minute she thought she had gotten rid of her crush on the big warrior, he would say or do something that brought all the butterflies rushing back again.

Though she loved reading BDSM romance, she had never been in any kind of a D/s relationship before…until now, she thought ruefully. Only Sirex had no idea she was thinking of him as her Dom.

There was just something about the big warrior that called to a part of her that had been buried up until now. Phoebe never had a desire to submit before—though she liked reading about it, she'd never met a man worth submitting to. Because she was as tall as most human guys, the idea of submitting to them seemed silly. And even if they were tall enough, most of them seemed stupid and vacuous. It was hard to find a human guy with anything besides money, sex, and sports on his mind—at least if her experience using the dating apps was anything to go by.

Sirex was different. He didn't offer personal information often…but he didn't withhold it either. When Phoebe asked about his childhood, hoping to learn more about him, he told her about growing up on Tranq Prime. He talked about killing his first V'ranna—a huge polar bear like beast with turquoise fur—at the age of twelve and his manhood ceremony afterwards. And then he told her that no one but his immediate family had come to the ceremony because of his half-Scourge blood. The rest of the people in the grotto he had lived in had shunned him because of his appearance and his lineage.

He asked questions about her life and her past relationships too. Some of them made her squirm, but Phoebe did her best to answer truthfully. She told him about being stood up for her Senior Prom and how she had gone with a group of girlfriends instead and had seen her date making out with her step sister.

That was a particularly painful memory, but when Sirex asked, she shared it. She found that she didn't want to hide things from her mentor. He offered her complete honesty and she wanted to do the same for him.

She became an expert at going through the training tunnel without getting nan'door stains. Even when she started seeing the light illusions—huge, glowing faces or terrifying monsters reaching for her—she just closed her eyes and listened to Sirex's voice guiding her through. All around her, the other cadets had bright green stains on their hands and faces but after the first day, Phoebe was mostly unmarked.

"How do you do it?" her friend Jillian asked, when they had a rare free afternoon and were having lunch together. "I keep messing up every time Speaks Danger, my Dark Twin mentor tries to guide me. Sings Peace, my Light Twin mentor is better—his voice is really soothing and he's good at calming me down if there's a really scary illusion. But even with him I get tripped up sometimes."

She held out her hands as evidence—they were covered in bright green nan'door stains.

"I don't know, I just listen to Sir's voice and do exactly what he tells me," Phoebe said dreamily.

"You do, do you?" Jillian arched a skeptical eyebrow at her. "So you're trying your best to be absolutely obedient , is that it?"

"Well, yes." Phoebe shrugged, feeling slightly put on the defensive. "I mean, Sir says that once we start going out in the field, obeying his orders could mean the different between life and death. Like if we were trying to sneak into enemy territory and there were landmines?—"

"Oh my God—you're in love with him!" Jillian exclaimed, her blue eyes going wide.

"What? I am not!" Phoebe exclaimed. "Why would you say something like that?"

"Oh, I don't know…maybe because your eyes get all wide and starry when you talk about ‘obeying' him? And the way you call him ‘Sir.' And that's just for starters," Jillian said, laughing.

"Stop it, I am not in love with my mentor!" Phoebe denied. "I just have a deep respect for him. And he told me to call him Sir—it's short for Sirex."

"Don't get so upset about it—I don't blame you a bit. He's really sexy in a scary kind of way," her friend said comfortingly. "Besides, you're not the only one. I have a huge crush on one of my mentors too."

"You do? Which one?" Phoebe asked, glad to shift the conversation away from herself.

Jillian shrugged.

"It depends. Sometimes it's Danger and sometimes it's Peace. I mean, when Danger gets mad at me and gets all growly, I used to get scared. Then the other day I was fed up and got angry right back at him—which seems to make him respect me more because he actually apologized! And then we had kind of a minute together where we were eye-to-eye and he was looking at me like…oh, I don't know like what, but it gave me butterflies, you know?"

"Mmm-hmm." Phoebe nodded. She knew all about butterflies.

"But then when I tripped in the tunnel and got all scraped up, Peace sat me down and treated my wounds and he was so gentle and careful and I just kind of melted inside, you know?" Jillian sighed. "I just don't know which one of them I like the most."

"Well, since they're Twin Kindred you wouldn't have to pick— if they weren't your mentors," Phoebe pointed out. "But having any kind of relationship right now, in the middle of our training, would be highly unethical."

"Yes, yes, I know, I know…" Jillian waved one hand irritably, as though shooing away the ethical consideration like a pesky fly. "But training doesn't last forever. And the Kindred don't have any rules against dating coworkers—which is what we'll be when we graduate from the Elite Academy and become Elite Espionage Agents ourselves."

"That's true, I guess…" Phoebe nodded, wishing she could have some hope that her mentor might consider her as a romantic partner. But she couldn't help remembering what he had said about the Scourge sexual practices being "unthinkable" to him. And wasn't that kind of what she wanted from him—the same kind of D/s relationship they had now, but taken to a more intense and sexual level?

Yes, she admitted to herself—that was exactly what she wanted. But how could she say such a thing to the big, imposing warrior? He would think treating her like a submissive and "punishing" her would make him a "Broken One."

Phoebe hadn't lived on the Mother Ship for long, but she already knew that the Kindred had very strict standards about how a man should treat a woman. They tolerated nothing but absolute respect and complete nonviolence. Maybe to them bondage and discipline might look like abuse.

Also, it sounded to Phoebe like her mentor had been fighting against the Scourge side of himself all his life. Did she really have the right to ask him to abandon that fight just for her gratification? And that was assuming that he felt for her what she felt for him, which she had no indication of…did she?

Phoebe wasn't sure. Sometimes it almost felt like Sirex might have feelings that were more than professional for her. He had certainly taken to heart her comment about being motivated by compliments. To be honest, Phoebe was beginning to think she had something of a praise kink. Because every time he told her what a good job she was doing or even said, "Good girl" when she did something particularly well, she felt a rush of pleasure go through her and she had to drop her eyes to hide how much she enjoyed her mentor's words of affirmation.

Well, maybe there was a way to have her cake and eat it too, she thought as she looked down at the tebla-rissa salad she'd ordered for lunch. What if she continued to submit to her mentor but just made it a little more obvious that she was submitting? Would that get any kind of reaction out of him? Maybe if it did, she might get an idea if she had a chance with him once he was no longer her teacher.

But despite her plans to try and learn how Sirex really felt about her, Phoebe's first indication that he might care didn't come from any plan she made herself. It happened on yet another trial in the training cave…